Wins, Wins, Wins..

All three teams we've been following lately have wins.

Aeros beat Heat, Blades beat Gladiators and Bolts made it in SO over the Thrashers.

Having said that, amidst lots of congratulations to Aeros and Blades..I will have to admit, I rooted for the Thrashers, but in view and, especially, sound, of the Bolt fans, kept that to myself, but inwardly cheered for them.

Very early a fight..and it fired them on, both teams.

Good passing, little slamming, little of that in 'corner digging out of pucks' from under multiply bodies, smooth skating and consistency...even distribution of energy and efforts kept game 1 on 1 through the 3 periods and through overtime, to be decided in a shoot out.

Kurtis Foster had his chance on the winning goal and fans were already cheering for Bolts, when the referee and officials conferred a long time to disallow this goal. From where we sat, we could not say, yeah, it was, or nay, it wasn't. But in the end it did not matter.. the next goal by a Bolt gave the win to them and the crowd went ballistic, my seat neighbour, a 'stout' and very vocally endowed, admirer of VINNEE, VINNEE, VINNEE (Lecavalier) and STAMMERS (Stamkos) was jumping up and down shaking the rafters, and to the other side a gentleman fan of MARTY (St.Louis) and 'Nitty Gritty' Niittymaki was bellowing till I feared my eardrums might burst.

All in all it was a fast paced game, despite one injured player of either side, who stayed on the ice for a while but made it back to bench and later back into the game.. and no Chicken dance was played over the tannoy as was recently the case in the TC to the huge disapproval of fans...

Plus a long interlude replacing cracked glass (must have been new installer-he took forever) and several 'iceboys or gals' (could not tell, they all wore long trousers and tee shirts) who 'groomed' the ice from time to time..which, of course, gave teams and officials time to rest and freshen up. Although none of the 2 goalies went off, they just skated around (Hedberg) or did on ice stretches (Niittymaki)

I truly admired the smoothness...oh, how easy did he make his saves seem....of Johan Hedberg, so elegant and not one superfluous movement in sight. Why gesture wildly when a simply lift of a glove, a leg stretched sideways can do it! To my non-goalie eyes he was a thing of beautiful elegance AND effectiveness. He did get 3. Star of the game.

Niittymaki of the Bolts had enormous and so dramatic looking saves.. he was literally flopping or falling ..on his stomach, on his back, legs sprawled any which way, arms akimbo...really. really great theater! And got 1. Star of the game, while "Stammers" Stamkos made 2. Star.

The arena teemed with fans, some of the 'expensive' seats stayed unoccupied, while in' the nosebleed sections and below, it was was elbow to elbow.. photos coming.